Drone environmental monitoring surveys

Queensland Drones provide a range of environmental management and drone environmental monitoring services on demand, using precision UAV (drone) technologies. These technologies offer safe, fast and very cost-effective alternatives to traditional environmental monitoring compliance activities because unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can operate in places that would normally be virtually inaccessible or would take too much time and effort to survey using traditional methods. We can inspect across thick scrub, gorges, wetlands and ridges, delivering live video feed to guide exploration and high quality photography and videography to inform decision-making.

If this is a new project please provide key information and we will respond promptly.

Our environmental management and monitoring survey services range from monitoring erosion in farmland and catchments to counting wildlife and pest species in largely inaccessible areas. We provide our services to government agencies, environmental researchers, scientists and local councils who have traditionally used terrestrial survey and photography or helicopter imaging services.

The benefits of our environmental management and monitoring services include:

Flexible – we can launch our UAVs when and where they’re needed (within CASA regulations and with reasonable weather conditions) without having to file complicated flight plans or wait for satellites to pass over.

Convenient – our imagery is up to the minute, which is critical for time-sensitive surveys and monitoring projects, especially those that use the same flight plan over time.

Cost-effective – UAV survey and photographic techniques are fast and low cost, able to be launched and completed in hours and at a fraction of the cost of aircraft or helicopter surveys.

Discrete – our UAVs are quiet, battery-powered and make very little noise once launched, so they don’t greatly disturb wildlife or animals on the ground.

We use a combination of UAV technologies including fixed wing UAVs that can cover large areas in a very short period, and multi-copters than can operate at very low altitudes and in tight terrain. We use both infrared and visual photographic techniques as well as medium and ultra-high definition video as required. We can, if needed, also apply thermal imaging technologies.

Our environmental management and monitoring services include:

Animal monitoring, location, tracking and counting

Tracking of migration routes and territories

Monitoring of poaching and wildlife theft activities

Mapping hiking trails and fire fighting trails

Surveys of nests, particularly high in the tree canopy

Monitoring of vegetation cover, growth and decline

Plant species identification and mapping

Fire detection, tracking and monitoring

Storm, cyclone and flood damage and assessment

Early identification of contamination from run-off

Detection and monitoring of deforestation and illegal logging

Monitoring and measurement of planting and re-planting projects

Mapping of forests and other natural habitats

Monitoring and time-comparison of coastal sand erosion

Terrain modelling (3D, orthographic and topographic mapping)

Modelling and mapping of rivers, creeks and waterways

Simulating water flows using topographic and elevation mapping

Monitoring for regulatory enforcement (e.g. protected areas)

Large scale project planning and site assessment

The data captured by our UAVs can be exported to land management applications like Ag Leader SMS and AgPixel, to mapping applications like DroneDeploy or Pix4D, or to computer aided design packages like AutoCad and ArcGIS to create 3D point clouds, mesh maps, volume maps, 3D tagged RGB and TIFF images, overlays and more. We can even export our data to as KML files for Google Earth and other global atlas systems.